You can enrol if you either:
- provide proof you’ll be living here for 6 months or more
- have lived in Australia for 6 months or more in the last 12 months
- live here and have applied for permanent residency.
You can enrol any time in the 6 months after you first arrive in Australia.
How to enrol
You can enrol in Medicare either:
- online through myGov
- by completing a Medicare enrolment form.
Enrolling online
You can enrol online in Medicare as either an individual or a family through myGov and track the progress.
To enrol online you and your family members need to:
- live in Australia
- have a current passport or ImmiCard
- have valid visa details from the Department of Home Affairs if you’re not an Australian citizen.
If you want to enrol as a family, we need details and identity documents for any children under 15.
If you want to include someone 15 or older, you need to give that person your application number.
They need the number to give us their details and identity documents through their own myGov account to complete their Medicare enrolment.
If you have a myGov account sign in and enrol in Medicare. If you don’t have a myGov account you need to create one.
If your application is approved, we’ll contact you with your next steps. We’ll also send you your Medicare card in the mail to the address you gave us.
Enrolling with a form
If you can’t enrol online, complete a Medicare enrolment form. You can mail or email it with your supporting documents to Medicare Enrolment Services.
If you email us, include ‘Medicare enrolment’ in the email subject line.
Make sure your documents are:
- in PDF, JPG, PNG, GIF or BMP format
- not password protected, or in a WinZip or RAR file
- no larger than 5MB for each document
- no larger than 10MB in total for all the documents.
Find out what documents you need to enrol.
Until you enrol, you can get care under the Reciprocal Health Care Agreement if you’re visiting. This covers essential treatment in a public hospital. You can’t enrol or get a Medicare card until you prove you live in Australia.